RMSS: Second Meeting

Research Methodology in Social Sciences

Dr. David Sichinava
September 8, 2018

Second Meeting

Today's plan

  • Lecture:
    • Science, Theory, Knowledge, and… Black Swans: Revisited
    • Two paradigms in social research
    • Ethics in social research

Recap: epistemology

Positivism Interpretativism
General laws of human behavior Study informants' in in-depth and empathic manner
Social sciences should use similar methods to natural science As we study our subjects through their viewpoint, the logic of natural sciences are not useful
Human behavior can be explained through general laws As humans are complex subjects, it is impossible to derive general laws

Quantitative versus Qualitative

Quantitative თვისებრივი
The role of theory Deductivism: theory testing Inductivism: theory generation
Epistemology: Similar to social sciences, that is *positivism(s) Interpreativism

Qualitative research

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Qualitative research

  • Social life should be studied in an in-depth manner

  • The rolse of natural environment

  • The role of understanding and interpreting the phenomenon

Qualitative research

  • Interviewing

  • Focus groups

  • Observation

  • Case study

Theory of qualitative research: symbolic interactionalism

  • People give meanings to the phenomena and act according to these emanings

  • Meanings form through social interaction

  • Social action depends on the process of interpretation

  • The meaning of things change over the process of interpretation

Blumer, 1969

The history of qualitative research

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Quantitative research

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Quantitative research

  • Studies the phenomenon in quantitative manner, that is how much/how many

  • Decribes and unveils associations and causal relations

    • Causality vs. correlation

  • Social reality can be understood through general laws which are measurable

Quantitative research

  • Opinion polls

  • Randomized experiments

  • Census

  • Big data

Quantitative research

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Ethics in social research

Experiment on obedience to authorities

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Stanford prison experiment

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Tuskegee syphillis study

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Informed consent

  • Voluntary Participation
  • No Harm to the Participants
  • Anonymity and Confi dentiality
  • Deception
  • Analysis and Reporting
  • Institutional Review Boards
  • Professional Codes of Ethics

Research ethics and fabricating results: Lacour and Greene, 2015

LaCour, M. & Green, D (2014): When contact changes minds: An experiment on transmission of support for gay equality, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/346/6215/1366

Brookman, D., Kalla, J., Aronow, P. (2014): Irregularities in LaCour (2014), http://stanford.edu/~dbroock/broockman_kalla_aronow_lg_irregularities.pdf

Plagiarism:

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წყარო: Citron, D., Ginsparg, P. (2014): Patterns of Text Reuse in a Scientific Corpus

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